Negative revue regarding Milkman amps

[Michael Maddex]

Yes, an interesting thread. FWIW, if I am interested in a product on one of the high volume sites like MF or Amazon, I seek out the bad reviews. If there are any legitimate complaints, that is where they will be found. Sure, there are some knuckleheads in there, complaining about the product when they ordered the wrong thing, but ´I luv it´ reviews don´t tell me anything at all.

That´s for the big kids. Generally, if I can contact a small business and tell them what I want to do, they will recommend a product if they have one. All just my dos pesos worth.

[b0b]

I added a 5-star review to add appropriate balance. I see that two other people have done the same.

[Dave Mudgett]

A. No reason to get excited. An anonymous internet reviewer made a negative review. All businesses that deal with the public have to deal with this. Anonymous reviews can be very useful to smoke out real issues, but they should always be very critically evaluated. There are a multitude of real issues that can taint reviews:

1. Different reviewers may have completely different premises about what is good/bad or important/trivial about a product or service;

2. Some reviewers may have strong preconceived biases about certain products or companies;

3. Some reviewers may be total shills, either posting positive reviews as a total favor for a friend or business acquaintance, or posting blackballing reviews against an enemy or competitor;

4. Some reviewers are quite clueless about a product or service. The fact that they're anonymous means you know nothing about their background and knowledge;

5. Many reviews give no useful information at all. As Mike says, "I luv it." or "I hate it." is pretty useless without some type of explanation of why.


B. I am, and I think anyone should be, very wary of extreme reviews like the one that started the original post. I see several warning flags:

1. The reviewer jackasses with drivel like "Wouldn't be surprised if it were made in China." when that is easily and absolutely refutable;

2. As Jim points out, this reviewer doesn't seem to understand anything about the distinction between power and loudness;

3. This comment is incredibly laughable:

One man shop? No thanks!!! Give me a company with at least a few people to respond to customers who are having technical difficulties and are spending big money on mediocre amps

. Let me see - I really want to spend big money on mediocre amps from a large company! Are you kidding me?

4. This comment is totally off-kilter and I think indicative of someone who has an axe to grind or some other type of problem:

I would never recommend this company to anyone, even my most despised enemies.

Personally, I will be very happy to recommend a bad product or service to my most despised enemies.

But on the other hand, this reviewer may have had a problem and didn't understand how to get it resolved. I think it's good that y'all put up your own reviews, based on actual experience with the amp. I'd do the same if I had any actual experience with Tim's amps, which I expect I will get at some point.

[Brooks Montgomery]

Sometimes in business you get that one-in-a-thousand customer that you try to please, you work with him, try to help, but nothing seems to work for him and it turns out that you're better off politely rolling out the red carpet for him, extending that pathway directly to one of your competitors. They deserve him.

[Patrick Huey]

OTOH this is not the first time I have heard about support response (or lack thereof) issues - one involving a member of this forum, another on an amp forum. Neither buyer wanted to voice complaints publicly because of expectation of backlash - I simply received requests for advice, i.e. "what should I do"?" via email.

I don't know whether Milkman is a one man operation or if there is a staff of 20 or more. I've never heard one of the amps in person. But regardless of some great reports here, the apparent "boutique" level of the business indicates fairly limited sales volume. And hearing about 3 different tech issues (each accompanied by support complaints) doesn't raise my confidence level - or interest - in the product line.

I respond to every single email for technical questions I receive. Some people message me via social media though. Nothing I can do about that. Those messages rarely see the light of day because they are filtered out into a junk folder.

There is a very specific explanation of warranty on my website, which covers repairs and all of my dealers take returns and on top of that there is a contact form on my website which goes directly to my personal email. There is also a phone number where I can take voicemails and receive texts. If people can not get ahold of me, I am not sure what more I can offer unless they want to visit me in person.

I appreciate that you are giving advice Jim, but the best advice you can give someone who is having a problem with a Milkman would be to contact me via my website www.milkmansound.com or through one of my dealers. Random messages sent to Facebook, Instagram, etc go into a junk folder never to be seen again.

Milkman is a one man shop, and I do the best I can to support several thousand customers. Its not an easy gig. But it could be worse... I could be running a restaurant and fielding complaints about a Yelp review.

It sounds like the Half and Half was not a good match for this customer. Hopefully he returned it and got something he liked better. 300 watts sounds like a big number but its actually only slightly louder than a 50 watt amp. Steel guitar players get that, guitar players seem to expect 300 watts to melt glass

Mr Marcus,
Although I’ve never owned one I know many guys that have and I’ve never NEVER read a negative post about a Milkman.

[Patrick Huey]

I added a 5-star review to add appropriate balance. I see that two other people have done the same.

b0b
I did the same with an added explanation as to the amp’s intended use. Clean squeaky clean sound ? YES! Thinking of using it on the road with Motörhead? Uhhhhm....NOPE! 😂

[b0b]

Jim Sliff: Milkman is definitely a one man shop. I've been there several times. Small and very cool!

But on the other hand, this reviewer may have had a problem and didn't understand how to get it resolved.

I ran into that with a bad Goodrich review on Reddit. Turned out that the guy got a used pedal bundled with a steel in trade and it didn't work. He thought he'd have to pound out the axle to service it. I pointed out that you only have to remove the rubber feet to get to the innards. He basically face-palmed at that. Duh! Problem solved.

[Bobby Nelson]

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I'd like to see if someone could explain (to a guy who's not an electrical engineer mind you), what the reason for having 6 times the amount of wattage, to achieve the same volume as a Hot Rod Deluxe might be.

[Benjamin Davidson]

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I'd like to see if someone could explain (to a guy who's not an electrical engineer mind you), what the reason for having 6 times the amount of wattage, to achieve the same volume as a Hot Rod Deluxe might be.

It is a bit off topic, but in summary there is a difference in efficiency in creating the signal to drive a speaker when Watts are compared between a class A or AB style Tube amp, and the class D amplifier of a solid state amp.

[Bobby Nelson]

Thanks Benjamin.

[Tony Prior]

and we have been marketing trained. How is it remotely possible for a 100 watt Katana to be just the same VOLUME as a 100 watt Marshal stack !

I mean 100 watts is 100 watts, isn't it ?

And we still have minions who someone have been convinced that 100 watts is 2x the output volume level of 50 watts

Vox started this madness with that dang AC100 they made for the Beatles. Blame them.

[b0b]

Watts isn't volume.

[Clark Doughty]

My two cents worth. I have a Milkman Half and Half and am totally happy with the amp. I do nave an experience with Tim I would like to share. I hadn't turned my amp on for a while and
when I returned to use it i couldn't get a response. I panicked and did all the checking I knew how to do to no avail. It was on the weekend and I emailed Tim and really didn't expect an
answer until the first of the week. Wrong, I got almost an immediate response and he detected
the problem, PILOT ERROR on my part. He told me what to do and bingo I had sound. I won't
try to describe the situation but there was NOTHING wrong with the amp. He had told me how
to do what I needed to do when I received the amp but I simply forgot. I give Tim from the time
he built my amp to the current experience a 5 star rating.........clark